Topics Covered: Issues related to health.
“Affordability of nutritious diets in rural India”:
Context:
It is a study authored by International Food Policy Research Institute economist Kalyani Raghunathan and others.
- The findings of the study were released recently.
Key findings:
- Selecting the cheapest options from actual Indian diets — wheat, rice, bajra, milk, curd, onions, radish, spinach, bananas — the study calculated that a day’s meals would cost ₹45 (or ₹51 for an adult man).
- Three out of four rural Indians cannot afford a nutritious diet. Even if they spent their entire income on food, almost two out of three of them would not have the money to pay for the cheapest possible diet that meets the requirements.
- If they set aside just a third of their income for non-food expenses, 76% of rural Indians would not be able to afford the recommended diet. This does not even account for the meals of non-earning members of a household, such as children or older adults.
Significance of the study:
The findings are significant in the light of the fact that India performs abysmally on many nutrition indicators even while the country claims to have achieved food security.
- The latest Global Hunger Index showed that India has the world’s highest prevalence of child wasting, reflecting acute undernutrition.
- On indicators that simply measure calorie intake, India performs relatively better, but they do not account for the nutrition value of those calories.
India’s Nutrition Guidelines:
The National Institute for Nutrition’s guidelines for a nutritionally adequate diet call for adult women to eat 330 gm of cereals and 75 gm of pulses a day, along with 300 gm of dairy, 100 gm of fruit, and 300 gm of vegetables, which should include at least 100 gm of dark green leafy vegetables.
The methodology used:
Unlike the Economic Survey’s ‘Thalinomics’, which provided a rosier picture of meal costs, this study uses the wages of unskilled workers who make up a larger proportion of the population than industrial workers, and includes items such as dairy, fruit and dark green leafy vegetables that are essential as per India’s official dietary guidelines.
InstaLinks:
Prelims Link:
- What is Thalinomics?
- Minimum amount of food and calorie content per child per day under Midday Meal scheme.
- About the International Food Policy Research Institute.
- Calculation of Poverty Line in India- various methodologies and Committees.
Sources: the Hindu.
